


pepper on top

by surreptitiously



Category: Tom Hiddleston Chinese Vitamin Commercial - Phil Wang Twitter edit
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreptitiously/pseuds/surreptitiously
Summary: "What you have to understand," Tom says, "is that my love language is acts of service."Nine times Phil and Tom eat breakfast together.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	pepper on top

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlecyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/gifts).

> I hope this makes you happy, you monster <3

**1&2**

To be honest, the first time it happens, Phil goes back to bed, and when he wakes up he assumes that it was a dream. There were too many bizarre details for it to have been anything else. The apron? The blackberries? The weird static wave at the end, like a politician might do when walking off a plane? Obviously it made no sense. He's been having a tough time at work lately; it's probably his subconscious mind trying to give him respite via a handsome man cooking him breakfast, no matter how weird and unsettling it actually is. The human brain is incredible.

So he tells his mates at the pub later and they all have a laugh, and it's good wholesome fun all around, and then he forgets about it for exactly three weeks. Later, he will look back and acknowledge this as the last time he truly knew peace.

The second time, Phil wakes up to the sound of faint music, but thinks nothing of it. He takes his time getting up, first scrolling through Twitter and Instagram and then making a mental note for the thousandth time to buy an alarm clock so he doesn't wake up every day and immediately start scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. Then he heads downstairs for coffee.

The music just gets louder as he walks downstairs and he's wondering why he's feeling such strong déjà vu when he rounds the corner, and the man looks up from Phil's chopping board and says, "Hi."

Weirdly, it's more of a shock this time. Maybe because before it had been so surreal that he'd been convinced while it was happening that it was a dream. In any case, this time, Phil jumps almost out of his skin, managing somehow to propel himself far enough backwards that he hits the wall. Whether he faints or whether he just briefly knocks himself out: who's to say?

He wakes up moments later to a draft. There are no signs of life in his house, and the door is swinging open, but when he goes to close it, outside is just as deserted. It's very strange and he's half heartedly gearing up to convince himself that it was another dream when he goes back into the kitchen to find breakfast on the table. He'd forgotten just how chaotic it was. This time, the cucumbers have been carefully arranged into a smile. It is terrifying.

He texts his housemate Rob, who is currently supposed to be backpacking across Europe. They're not exactly close, and Rob has an odd and slightly worrying penchant for collecting bird skulls that Phil has always found suspect, but he never thought that he'd just let random people into the house while he's away.

_Weird q - have you given your key to anyone while you're away?_   
_Specifically any handsome white guys with weird culinary habits?_   
_Hope you're having fun, bring me back a souvenir!_

The answer comes back almost immediately.

_??? Is this code_   
_No lol_   
_Image.jpeg_

The image is a blurry picture of what looks like a crow skull. It kind of looks like it hasn't fully decomposed yet. Phil really hopes it isn't his souvenir.

It's not exactly a reassuring response but there are a lot of other pieces to the puzzle that don't add up. Why the vitamins? If he was a friend of Rob's, why was he making Phil breakfast? Where had he come from, at 6am, and where was he going for a few weeks? And why was the breakfast so weird?

Thinking back to what he'd said, before, there's a more worrying factor that's staring Phil in the face. The man had been speaking like he knew him. If Phil is honest, he'd been staring deep into Phil's soul, even if he didn't seem to have heard anything Phil actually said.

For a while, he considers the possibility that there's something supernatural going on. There could have been an egg-related murder in the house before he'd moved in, maybe, or he might have some kind of particular psychic sensitivity. It wasn't like he'd ever seen a ghost before, but then again, maybe he'd only noticed because it was just such a weird ghost. Phil could have been seeing dead people this whole time and just not noticing because they weren't in his house.

But the strange man had looked solid. Phil had straightened his shirt for him, and he was sure he'd felt a heartbeat. And anyway, when he calls a psychic to ask, she calls him "exceptionally imperceptive and mundane". He pretends that it doesn't hurt his feelings.

The thing is that it's just such a weird problem to have. His friends ask him what's new with him and he has to say "Oh...nothing…". He considers the possibility that he's having some kind of hallucinatory nervous breakdown, but otherwise, he feels fine. He can't explain it to the nice person who talks him through the experience of having a psychotic break when he calls NHS 111, because it just makes him sound like he had a bad trip.

Eventually, he decides to stop thinking about it. Twice is just a coincidence, after all.

* * *

**3**

Three times, though, is a pattern.

This time, he recognises the sound of that godforsaken jingle right away. He opens his eyes and knows exactly what he is going to find in a now-familiar black apron downstairs.

Phil has had a long week. Yesterday, he'd had meetings all day, including a presentation that had gone horribly, and then when he'd finally left work, all the trains home had been cancelled so he'd spent a lovely hour trying not to be sick on the rail replacement bus. When he was finally home, all he had in for dinner was a Super Noodle that he thinks he'd bought maybe as a student, eight years ago. Then he'd had hayfever all night: at 2am he'd apparently googled "ITCHY EYES GO BLIND??", with inconclusive results. Suffice it to say that he is not in the mood.

"Hi," the strange man had said, smiling charmingly, and Phil snaps.

"_Fuck off and die_," he hisses, and drawing on hitherto unknown reserves of strength, pulls the stranger out of his kitchen by his stupid minimalist apron, still holding Phil's fanciest knife. He doesn't protest; if anything, he looks confused, the smile still frozen on his face. Phil doesn't dwell on it. It just makes it easier for him to push the guy out of the door, shutting it firmly in his face.

He leans against the door for a few seconds, letting the adrenaline and confusion and anger and slight guilt really settle in, before walking away. Which is when he hears it: a gentle tapping, almost a scrape, against the glass panel next to the door.

Phil stops dead in his tracks before slowly turning around.

The strange handsome man is smiling at him through the window, looking eerily peaceful, like a benevolent god secure in the knowledge that they wield the power to destroy universes. Phil's knife is still in his hand, tapping against the window as he knocks on it.

"I finished early so I thought I'd pop back and make you breakfast," he mouths.

Phil stands stock still for a few long seconds, looking at him, before saying, out loud, "No," and turning on his heel.

He goes into the kitchen. He ignores the half-chopped pepper on the side. (He hadn't even had any in - had the guy brought it himself?) He pours himself a large mugful of black coffee and drinks it, staring determinedly out of the window. When he's done, he steels himself, and goes back into the hallway so he can get his toothbrush.

The guy is still there, looking hopefully through the window. He looks kind of cold.

Phil surveys him for a second. There's nothing else for it. Seeing no other way forward, he walks down the hall, opens the door, and ushers the man grimly inside.

They go through the same motions again. Phil doesn't waste time questioning it. He just wants it to be over. He even takes a bite out of the damn egg.

When the guy leaves, Phil scrapes the rest of the plate into the bin with a sense of vicious satisfaction, and goes to shower.

Three days later, he's halfway through taking the bins out when he freezes, remembering.

"What?" says Rob, from where he's behind him with the green bin, which presumably is full of horrifying taxidermy byproducts. Phil delegated responsibility for all the organic waste to Rob a long time ago for exactly this reason. "Don't tell me it's the brown bins this week."

"No, no," says Phil, distracted. He's remembering the man and what he'd said, again: "I'll make it up to you soon, I promise."

It's not over.

He puts down the paper bin and turns around, eyeing Rob. Maybe it's time to bring someone in on this. They both live there, after all, so Rob should probably be aware that there's a breakfast maniac who likes to eat blackberries with an egg on top who breaks into their house on the regular.

And Rob can't be weird about it. People who order raven skeletons off the deep web for their unsuspecting housemates to open forfeit their right to be weird about anything.

"This guy keeps breaking in and trying to make me eat vitamins," he tries to say, but somehow what comes out is, "It's your turn to clean the bathroom."

"I'm doing it, I'm doing it," says Rob vaguely. "Who are you, my mum?"

"No," says Phil, and opens his mouth to explain. "I meant to say that there's this stupidly handsome man out there who knows where we keep the knives."

With a mix of horror and fascination, he listens to himself say, instead, "There's a reason why we have a rota. And you never fucking scrub the bathtub."

"I don't take baths," says Rob. "I'm not eight. Or pregnant."

"Fuck you," says Phil, changing his mind about confiding in Rob. Maybe he should look for a new place. That would solve both the problem of his repeat non-burglar and the one of his dickhead roommate.

That night, after an hour on Rightmove reminding himself just how woeful the London rental market is, he faces facts. This is a situation that is not going away. He doesn't know what's happening and he doesn't know why it's happening to him, but for all Phil knows, this is his life now, forever, and there's nobody he can turn to for help, because he can't physically explain what's going on.

It's either a curse or just a severe case of British inability to disturb the status quo. Either way, it doesn't matter. His mission now is to figure out what the fuck is going on and to get it to stop.

He doesn't know when the guy is next going to make an appearance, but it's always been a Thursday, and always at the end of the month. He puts it in his calendar and downloads a period tracker app for good measure. Then he installs a burglar alarm with a little camera in the kitchen, makes sure he has clothes to wear every morning before going downstairs should he need them, and tries in vain to come up with a plan.

* * *

**4**

Phil wakes up with a sense of impending doom.

Heart sinking, he rolls over and checks his phone, scrolling through messages and push alerts. Sure enough, there's an unfamiliar notification:

_Your next cycle is about to begin._

Faintly, he can hear the sound of upbeat music. He resigns himself to his fate.

Watching the man create his monstrosity of a breakfast plate for the fourth time, Phil feels a little more composed, even if not prepared. He doesn't know what he has to do to get him to go away, but he is going to find out if it kills him.

Though by now, despite how unnerving it is that this man can somehow enter Phil's house at will and immediately find his chef's knives, Phil is pretty sure that he is not actually going to kill him.

The man dishes up breakfast. Phil, sitting across the table, studies him.

There's something odd about him, besides the obvious. He's probably the most handsome guy Phil has ever met and his air of sheer charm is almost uncanny. But Phil isn't weirded out by him, the way he's weirded out by Alexa's voice and Blade Runner and Scarlett Johansson in Her. He says and does the same thing every time, like someone has pulled a string in his back, but Phil has checked and there isn't one.

"What's your name?" he says abruptly, forestalling him as he's about to confirm that Phil likes pepper on top.

The man blinks.

This is the biggest response that Phil has ever managed to extract from the guy, who usually just looks deep into Phil's eyes without seeming to register a single thing he says. Phil is counting it as a win.

"Tom,” he says after a brief pause, and then, “Pepper on top, right?"

"I'm Phil," says Phil. "Actually pepper makes me sneeze, but - okay, well, you've done it now. This is going straight in the bin when you're gone, anyway. No, I won't have a vitamin. No offence or anything."

The man - Tom - looks down at the vitamin bottle and then back up again, with sorrowful eyes.

"I'm sorry, I just think it's weird," says Phil. “Those tablets could have anything in them. You could have emptied them out and filled them with - with drugs, or poison. Anything! Anyway, I try to make sure I have a pretty balanced diet. I don’t need them.”

Tom looks him up and down, critically. “You look great,” he capitulates.

Like the previous time, and the time before that, he immediately heads to the door, saying, “I’ll probably be a bit busy for the next few weeks,” over his shoulder as he does. He shrugs on his coat and looks expectantly at Phil until he sighs and reaches out to smooth down his collar.

“This makes me feel like I’m sending my husband to fight in the War of 1812,” he mutters.

Tom laughs. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“You’re good,” says Phil dryly. “Well, see you in a few weeks.”

“Bye, Phil,” says Tom, and leaves.

Phil stares after him, until he blinks and Tom is somehow mysteriously gone. This is the first deviation from the usual script that he’s noticed. It’s weird: it feels counterintuitive to tell the guy he’ll see him soon, when he preferably would rather see him never,and it’s not like he’s really got much clarity on the situation as a whole, but it also feels like progress. Kind of like going to the dentist. Maybe the solution is to just play along until something new happens.

* * *

**5, 6, 7**

After that, Phil is ready. He’s reviewed the footage from his burglar alarm camera and figured out that Tom manages to somehow let himself in at exactly 5.55. He's in the apron by the time he enters the kitchen and he's carrying a bag of groceries.

So the next time, Phil is waiting for him downstairs.

"Hello," he says, as Tom opens the door. Tom pauses momentarily, looking taken aback, before his customary effortless grace reasserts itself.

"Hi," he says. "Morning."

"Let me guess," says Phil. "You finished early so you thought you'd pop back and make me some breakfast?"

Tom smiles and inclines his head. "Quite."

"After you, then," says Phil, and lets him in.

Something changes when Phil decides to just go with the flow, and after the fifth or sixth time, he realises with surprise that he's getting used to Tom. It's a strange thing to think about the guy who periodically breaks into your house, but he just seems to radiate waves of earnest good intentions, even if they manifest in a breakfast that is largely useless to Phil and vitamins he still doesn't trust won't give him spider powers. Phil just gets the feeling that Tom really does wants him to have a balanced breakfast. He really _will _make it up to Phil soon.

They usually cover the same ground (pepper on top, vitamins, etc etc) but Phil is slowly making inroads into more meaningful conversation. He's figured out that Tom never answers any questions that might threaten the reality of the bizarre scene they keep playing out, but he's managed to find out more by sticking to the innocuous.

"You must love blackberries," he comments, watching Tom ruin a perfectly good egg. "Me, I'm a blueberry man. You can't beat a strawberry, either."

"My dog is allergic to them," says Tom, then looks surprised, as he does whenever Phil manages to coax any personal information out of him.

"You've got a dog?" says Phil. "I love dogs. What's it called?"

"Bobby," says Tom, and smiles, before remembering. "No pepper?"

"No pepper," confirms Phil. Progress.

He starts to buy all the ingredients required for Tom's breakfast whenever he's anticipating a visit, even though he still refuses to eat it. Tom looks genuinely gratified when he realised that it's all there for him, even the sweetcorn, which Phil generally finds disgusting. He always manages to pick a day that Rob is out, which is fine by Phil. It turns out Tom is a pretty good listener.

"And I've been working on this piece for - god, months," Phil vents, maybe the sixth or seventh time, picking delicately at his egg. Tom, sat across from him, nods, absorbed in his story. "But my manager tells me it's "not right". I mean, what does that even mean?"

"I often think of the importance of controlling the narrative," says Tom. "Of course we must listen to the people around us, but when it comes to our own lives, and the work we produce, the bottom line has to be one we draw. If we let other people shape our stories -" He chuckles sadly. "Let's just say I know how that can hurt all too well."

Phil sits back, blinking. This is the most he's ever heard Tom say in one go, and beyond that, it is deep.

"That was profound, man," he says. Tom laughs sheepishly.

"I'm serious," says Phil. "It's nice to have a friend I can ask for advice about this stuff. Maybe you should be my manager."

"Phil, you are remarkable," says Tom. "You are a miracle of nerve and blood and bone! You are fearless, unstoppable, and innovative. I believe absolutely in your ability to overcome this."

Phil digests this. "So…no."

Tom laughs. "I'm afraid not. I've learned that getting too close can be something of a treacherous slope. And in fact, I should be going."

"You'll be busy for the next few weeks, right?" says Phil. "Honestly, I'm beginning to doubt if you'll ever make it up to me."

"I will, soon," says Tom. "I give you my word."

The way Tom talks sometimes, Phil almost suspects him of coming on to him. Which, coming from a guy with that facial structure, is an immense compliment, obviously, and in any other world he'd be all over it, but it's also mildly concerning. He obviously has his own issues, you know? Phil isn't in a place where he can shoulder the emotional burdens of a man who thinks that cabbage and eggs go together. But he doesn't want to lead him on, what with the weird shirt straightening habit that they've somehow developed, so the next time Tom comes over, he tries to subtly sneak in a few dating anecdotes to warn him off.

"I'm swearing off men," he finds himself declaring. "No pepper, thank you. I should really just get rid of the pepper mill."

"You mustn't close yourself off from love," says Tom earnestly. "I myself went through what you're going through some years ago and it changed me quite profoundly. To be vulnerable is sad; beautiful, but tragic. But you'll find, as I did, that despite how delicate the human heart is, it is also resilient."

Phil, pretending not to notice that Tom's eyes are shiny, leaves a moment of respectful silence before saying, "Okay, but men are all shit."

"As men, we do all bear some responsibility for the level of overall suffering in the world," hedges Tom. "The patriarchy -"

"Specifically London boys," says Phil loudly. "They're all city wankers or they think that wearing expensive glasses makes them hot enough for you to want to read their novel."

"Ouch," says Tom. Phil would bet a million pounds that Tom has at least one creative writing project in his notes app, which is why he'd said it.

Is he going to regret warning off the hottest guy he's ever spoken two words to? It's hard to say. The thing is, Phil is almost getting used to Tom being around. Yes, it's disconcerting, and yes, he's running the risk of this all being some kind of bewildering long con, and yes, he still has no answers to any of the questions he'd had at the start. But Tom is pretty nice. He gives good advice. Phil isn't desperate to see the back of him, even though it might be nice to stop wasting so many blackberries.

"Here," he says, pushing the plate back over to Tom. "I'm not hungry. You have it."

Tom raises a questioning eyebrow. Phil nods encouragingly, and then watches in fascinated disgust as Tom devours the whole thing.

"I guess there's no accounting for taste," he says. "I know you won't answer this, but I have to ask: _why_?"

Tom shrugs and says, "Don't blame _me_," and Phil thinks he might finally get an answer, but then he continues, "I'll probably be a bit busy for the next few weeks."

Phil sighs. "Yeah, I got it."

* * *

**8**

Phil has known Tom for going on eight months when he sees him outside of his kitchen for the first time.

Admittedly, he's only moved as far as his living room. Phil doesn't really watch TV, and for a comedian, he's remarkably out of tune with popular culture as a result. It helps with material in an odd way; he never accidentally copies anyone.

But for once, he's on the sofa while Rob is watching TV. He's on his laptop, barely paying attention, but he glances up at one point and there's Tom, on his screen.

Wearing a pair of green horns.

"What's this?"

Rob glances over at him. "What?"

"What are you watching?" says Phil, feeling crazy. Tom is still onscreen.

"...the Avengers?" says Rob. "Marvel?"

"I'm DC only," says Phil. "Who's that?"

Rob looks back at the TV. "You mean Tom Hiddleston?"

"Who?"

Rob looks lost for words. "You don't know Tom Hiddleston?"

"Well, apparently I do," says Phil.

"Course you bloody do," says Rob, looking relieved. "Went out with Taylor Swift, didn't he? Unless you don't know her either, har har."

"I hate you," says Phil devoutly, but his mind is racing. It all adds up: the breakup Tom had mentioned, the bizarre work schedule that means he finishes in the early hours and disappears for weeks. That does sound like the cutthroat world of Hollywood, not that he knows anything about it.

But the more he thinks about it, the more _nothing_ adds up. In fact, it makes even less sense than it did before, which he had previously thought was impossible. It seems ridiculous to think of Tom coming from his glitzy life of glamour and game to Phil's kitchen, for some utterly obscure reason, and then just going straight back to it. He never expected Tom to live in a real place, that wasn't maybe some kind of corporate fairy dell or a witch cave in the mountains done up to look like a boardroom. He never expected Tom to have a real life. Or for his real life to be quite so unreal.

Maybe the cheekbones should've been a giveaway.

Phil spends that night on Google and emerges blinking into a whole new world. He gets why Rob didn't want to explain it now. He doesn't know if the phenomenon that Tom Hiddleston can fully be explained, let alone reconciled to the man Phil knows as a benign burglar, a purveyor of disgusting breakfasts. His friend, Tom.

Nothing makes sense, but this realisation flickers Phil's desire to figure this the fuck out back into being. There are so many specifically weird things going on that Phil is convinced that it has to mean something. This doesn't just happen organically. He thinks maybe he gave up on the supernatural theories too soon. Or maybe it's aliens? Or maybe Phil is in a coma and none of this is real?

He tries tracking Tom down outside of their allotted breakfast date but soon realises that Tom's security is locked down because of the sheer determined innovation of his teenage fangirls, and it feels a lot creepier for Phil as an adult man to be trying. And the closer he gets to Tom's world, the more out of place he feels. It just doesn't fit: not just for the obvious reasons, but because he's just _Tom_. In the shadow of his celebrity is not a place where Phil blends easily, but Tom is perfectly at home in Phil's kitchen. That was the whole problem to start with.

So eventually, he gives up, and just waits.

In eight months, Tom hasn't been late once. Phil is sitting on the stairs waiting for him when he lets himself in.

"I know who you really are," he says.

Tom pauses, before saying, "Hey."

"You're a famous actor!" says Phil, trailing after him into the kitchen. "You've won a Golden Globe! And Rear of the Year! Kept that quiet, didn't you?"

"I try not to flaunt it," says Tom modestly.

"All this time, I thought I knew you," says Phil. "Well - no, I didn't, obviously, but I didn't think you'd be a _millionaire_."

"In my defence, this is all Waitrose," says Tom. He cracks his egg, before sighing and looking at Phil. "I'm sorry you feel this way, Phil. But you know - it's been rather refreshing, getting to spend so much time with someone who has absolutely no earthly expectations of me. Indeed, negative expectations. Even if it's not under better circumstances."

"But that's what I don't understand," Phil says. "Surely you don't actually want to be here. You don't want to break into my house and make me this crazy breakfast and say the same thing every time. It's too strange. So why do you do it?"

Tom looks conflicted for a moment. "I want to tell you," he says eventually.

"Mate, at this point, I'll accept any explanation. Nothing can shock me. I've thought of everything, from ayahuasca to Voldemort."

"I can't explain," says Tom. "I physically can't. It's also too mortifying."

"Is it a spell?" demands Phil. "Are you a witch? Are you from Mars?"

"Phil," says Tom, sadly. "All I truly am is a hopeless fool."

Phil waits, but this appears to be all that's forthcoming. He sighs. "Alright. So do you want to talk about it, or not?"

"I told you, I can't," says Tom.

"I mean, about your breakup," says Phil. "Now that I kind of know what happened. Look, dude, you obviously have issues. We're clearly getting nowhere with the breakfast thing, so let's shelve it. But there are only so many blatant hints about your broken heart that I can ignore."

Tom is silent, and for a moment, Phil thinks he's off the mark. But then he scrubs a hand over his face and says, "But you don't know what happened. In fact, you were closer to knowing before you ever knew who I was. You were closer to knowing me when every word that I had said to you was about breakfast."

"Okay…" Phil says slowly.

"The truth is," says Tom. "That these moments, abnormal as they are, have been the closest thing I've had to normalcy in a very long time. And that's because it didn't matter that I was an actor or a millionaire or that I dated - anyway. I was just your odd friend. And you can call it a curse, or a spell, or a freak of fate; call it what you want, but for me, what you have given me, the real me, is absolute generosity and friendship. I fear that now things may change - but then, I suppose, so it goes."

"Wow," says Phil, when he's sure that Tom is done. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't worry about it," says Tom. "I just wanted you to know. Cards on the table."

"Thank you," says Phil. He pauses. "You know what you haven't said?"

Tom's brow furrows. Hesitantly, he opens his mouth. "I lo-"

"_No_," says Phil, appalled. "Jesus Christ. We barely know each other. Is this what you always do? You need to calm down, dude. No. You haven't told me you popped back to make me breakfast. Or asked me to eat a vitamin."

Tom frowns, properly, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a familiar box. They both look at it for a moment. Slowly, an idea takes shape in Phil's mind.

"Give me those," he says, and Tom obliges. Phil taps one out into his hand.

"It's worth a shot," he mutters, and before he can change his mind, drops it into his mouth and swallows it.

Tom looks at him, wide-eyed. They wait with baited breath.

Nothing happens.

"Well, now I feel like a dick," says Phil. Tom opens his mouth, but before he can reply -

"What the _fuck_?" says Rob, standing stock still in the doorway.

* * *

**9**

Phil doesn’t see Tom for a long time, after that.

One month rolls by with no sign of him, then two. Phil deletes the period app off his phone. When he does the weekly food shop, he hesitates by the blackberries, and then moves swiftly on.

Things have been weird in the house since the last time. Despite Phil’s best efforts, he hasn’t really been able to fully convince Rob that he was just super high. He had been pretty high, which helped, but it’s hard to mistake a guy like Tom as being the stuff of imagination. He’d left pretty quickly after that, and got papped walking down Phil’s road. Whatever it was that had made sure that Tom and Phil were trapped inside their own very specific world to the exclusion of everyone else, whether it was a curse or some kind of bizarre collective delusion, it’s gone now.

Phil knows he should be relieved. But if he’s honest, he kind of misses having Tom around. He’d been a good listener, and funny, too. They’d been friends.

Slowly, his life returns to normal. The whole interlude takes on a vaguely foggy quality, like a particularly vivid dream that you only remember because you make a mental note to in the half-dozing moments after you wake up. It makes much more sense as a dream.

In fact, he hardly thinks about it anymore when it happens, a good seven months after he'd last seen Tom. He's in central London for meetings and is passing through Seven Dials when something makes him look up from his phone. It's busy, as always, with tourists taking pictures of the Christmas decorations up on Monmouth Street and people loitering outside the Cambridge Theatre and cars trying to edge their way past, and it takes him a moment to spot the tall man in sunglasses on the other side of the monument who's looking at him.

Phil squints back, trying to figure out why he looks so familiar, when the man lifts up his sunglasses and smiles at him. It takes a second to click, during which time a van honks at him and he has to jump out of the way. When he looks up, Tom is gone.

Phil feels like Anne Hathaway at the end of The Devil Wears Prada. He goes home and watches it for good measure while he's eating takeaway noodles, and falls asleep on the sofa in his oldest tracksuit bottoms. He wakes up in the morning to the sound of knocking, and stumbles to the door.

"Hey," says Tom, and smiles. "Morning. I think I owe you breakfast."

"I haven't got any eggs," says Phil dumbly.

"Maybe it's time we switched things up a bit," says Tom.

In the end, because Phil is woefully underprepared and a single man in his late twenties who hasn't done a big shop in two and a half weeks, they end up having bowls of Crunchy Nut and mugs of tea. Rob is away, thank god, but he's left all his shit on the kitchen table. Phil hastily sweeps away the bigger bones before Tom can see them.

"What is this?" he says, sounding more interested than judgemental.

"Oh, it's my roommate's," says Phil, vaguely. "Sorry, let me clear all this away."

"Hold on," says Tom, and grabs Phil's arm. "What's this?"

"What?" says Phil, looking down at the random junk in his hands. Tom reaches out and plucks out what looks like a necklace made of bone ivory.

"Sorry, that's horrifying. This is so bad for the planet. I need to have a word with him."

"It's not that," says Tom. "A lot of things have just started to make sense."

"Please," says Phil. "Enlighten me."

As they sit down with their cereal, Tom begins to explain.

"What you have to understand," he says, "is that my love language is acts of service."

He looks expectantly at Phil like this is supposed to mean something to him. It doesn't, at first, but then something clicks.

"The breakfasts," he says.

"Yes," says Tom. "But before that. As you know, I fell in love fast and hard a few years ago, and it's haunted me ever since. I'll be the first to put up my hands and say that I wasn't an innocent; I did love her, but I was shortsighted about it. Selfish, even. I thought that - private jets, and big displays, you know, were what she wanted."

"Fair enough," says Phil. "Sounds great to me."

"It didn't to her," says Tom, sounding pained. "That summer - it changed us all, I think. It left me reeling. I haven't moved on well."

"You don't say," says Phil. "I couldn't have told."

"And recently, we struck up a friendship," says Tom. "I thought I was ready, but - and she felt bad, too. She wanted to change things. So she gave me in one form what she couldn't in another: the ability to provide for someone. Someone who saw me for who I really am. Unfortunately, things went...badly."

Phil digests this. "So you're telling me," he says, "that Taylor Swift put a spell on you to come and...make me breakfast? To...get over her?"

"I didn't realise that's what she was doing," says Tom. "But she has a necklace like this one, and I know she's dabbled in, ah, the occult. Her cats are her familiars, you know. I think this must be why it was you who was chosen."

"This is beyond," says Phil. "You people are actually certifiably off the charts. Can you even report that to the police? I feel like we should?"

"She did mean well, I believe that," Tom says. "I've just always been - collateral damage, to her. Anyway, the spell is broken now. I don't know how. Perhaps it was wearing off already. Perhaps it was you trying the vitamin. Or, perhaps it worked; perhaps it was me, changing. Healing. We'll never know. It wasn't a perfect spell to begin with."

"Yeah, I'll fucking say," says Pete.

"I'd have you sign an NDA, but I don't think anyone would believe you," says Tom, lips quirking. "Anyway - it would be a shame if we parted ways acrimoniously now."

"Yes," says Phil. "I agree. But I have to know: why that fucking breakfast? It is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen."

"That's where you're wrong," says Tom. "Every element has been carefully chosen for its health properties and delicious taste. Did you know that one serving of blackberries contains 35% of your everyday recommended Vitamin C intake? Incredible, isn't it?"

Phil sits back. "You genuinely eat that?"

"Rear of the Year doesn't win itself," says Tom.

"Well, I suppose that's fair," says Phil. A knot in his chest that he hadn't realised was there has begun to loosen. "Tom, I don't know about you, but I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

"Do you know, I quite agree," says Tom, and smiles at him. "I think it's well past time, Phil, that you and I begin again."


End file.
